Category Archives: Gold

Ahh…TGIF! I’m one of those lucky people who have Fridays off, and today I finally had some time to do something new to my nails: striping tape art 🙂

Recently I got different colours of striping tape from the amazing Born Pretty Store (seriously the best online store for nail art props!), and I’d been trying to figure out how to use it in a design…and in comes the equally amazing Barry M!

When I was in Scotland a couple of weeks back, I went straight to the closest store carrying Barry M nail polish as I adore that brand! One of the shades I got was ‘Navy’. It’s exactly that, a rich, creamy shiny navy. One coat could do the trick, but I did two anyway to get a really swanky look.

Then the slightly tricky bit. In the Nail Dummy (and my personal) style, I like to keep things sleek and clean, so luckily I already decided to do a simple horizontal band using a swanky gold colour. Saves some time and frustration, as it’s quite a precise little project to get the tape on straight 😉

Basically, roll off some tape and position it over the nail once the polish is really dry. No really dry, so paint them first, have a drink, have some dinner, and only then start taping, or you will regret it…
Once it’s on kind of straight, take your thinnest pair of nail scissors and cut off. Then, tuck in the tape down the sides of your nail and cut off any bits that are still too long. You want a very snug fit as otherwise you might accidentally peel off the tape!

After finishing each nail, I instantly painted on a coat of fast drying top coat, also to seal it in better.

All in all, it’s not complicated, and I love the result, nice and chic 🙂

Oh hi there! Monday’s kind of the day I file down those nails and do my first design of the week. Over the weekend I was fancying something black again, and decided to make it a gradient with gold, classy and edgy at the same time.

First I started off with 2 coats of Claire’s Gel-like polish in black. This is the best-value black gel-like polish I know of, it goes on really shiny, so much so you’d hardly need any top coat for the shine. Not today though, it needs gold! Continue reading →

OK so I’m nearly done posting my progress ‘pre-blog’. Next week, when I do my nails again (I’m still loving the blue nails I did, see my first blog entry) I’ll start taking more pics while I’m painting my nails. And then you’ll see the royal mess I make! I have no intention of acting as if I can do perfectly manicured nails without painting half my hands as well 🙂

Speaking about royal, out here in The Netherlands excitement is growing by the day as our current Queen Beatrix is stepping aside on April 30, to make way for her son Willem-Alexander. As I’m in Amsterdam, I’m already often bumping into cars from the royal family and staff, probably there to inspect the sites for the big day. I’ll be doing a special mani ready for this day consisting of the Dutch flag colours red, white, blue and royal colour orange, but long story short, all this royal talk got me in the mood for doing something in typical royal purple and gold. A very classy combination of colours indeed! At the same time, my sticky tape was looking at me as if it were saying ‘go on then, you know it’s time to do a real taped manicure?’. And yes, I did fancy practicing my taping skills, so here goes. Continue reading →